We spend our whole lives recovering from high school.

Pistachio nuts, the red ones, cure any problem.

When my father would yell at me, I told myself someday I'd use it in a book.

I want to keep meeting new people, enlarging my circle of friends. I have great friends now... really good people. But I'm always ready for what comes next

Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.

Normally, I name my characters after famous comedians.

My father was a very unhappy person, very sarcastic, and my mother was very nervous and worried about what people thought. They weren't monsters, but it wasn't a good childhood.

I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that my books have never gone out of print - none of them

I made the choice long ago to write about real life. And life is both serious and funny.

Sometimes it's easier to show than it is to tell

Mistakes are growth, and we learn not to do it again. But it doesn't make you a terrible person. That's important to me.

Losers have tons of variety. Champions take pride in just learning to hit the same old boring winners.

I would like to tell the young men and women before me not to lose hope and courage. Success can only come to you by courageous devotion to the task lying in front of you.

I don't know where to put whales. I'm sticking them here, but I don't have any reason for it.

I don't think photography has anything remotely to do with the brain. It has to do with eye appeal.

When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing.

All my friends are dying. That's why I always wear black.

To silence the Voice of God is damnation in time!

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.

Sleeping we imagine what awake we wish; D ogs dream of bones, and fishermen of fish.

President Bush has committed billions to the fight against AIDS, thus making retroviral drugs available to millions of HIV-positive Africans.